Temple of Heaven

Today we actually planned to go to a spa. But, since we did not know yet which one to go to we made a different plan. It contained Silk Market for some shopping, Temple of Heaven for the culture, and Beijing Opera for the entertainment.
But before going on with our day, after meeting up with the girls (being Marlene, Luca and Beth), we went to the Chinese yellow arches again for some breakfast. In my case: orange juice, because I already had breakfast.
We went inside the Silk Market and did better this time. We started at the top and went down from there. It was easier, because at the top there are less people screaming at you and nobody touches you. So a nice place to start, I think. We, again, bought a few things. Beth and I did a deal for two colored pants. She got a red one and I have yellow pants now.

After we did enough shopping we met up with Kaho and went to the Temple of Heaven. The weather was great and we were all in some kind of..uhm.. what is the right word.. crazy mood :P
That is why we made these weird, funny photos. 'Strike a pose' they said to me. And so I did. We also made pictures with one person standing on each level. Normal ones, and ones were we made the WMCA-letters with our arms. It was a wonderful state of mind we were in. After a while this had to pass though, because we were all very tired. We sat down at the round alter on the other side of the park, before walking back to the subwaystation.

We went out the subway and straight to the opera building because we had to buy tickets to the Beijing Opera we wanted to see that night. We managed to buy seven tickets on our own, without any Chinese person helping us and after that,, I am ashamed to say,, we had a quick dinner at the big golden arches again. It was just because it was across the street and we didn't have that much time before the opera began. Two other girls joined us for the opera and we went to our seats, which were all the way in the back of the theatre. But it was good enough to get a good idea of the Beijing opera.
The first half an hour I think we all were amazed. The costumes are beautiful and the singing is so different from what we are used to. Also the way the actors move and stuff like that. The next two and a half hour were less interesting.. Three hours of not understanding anything and listing to people 'screaming', was not the best way to spend our evening. But we did experience the real Beijing Opera. And, to pass the time, I made up my own story about what was going on on stage. My story got more complicated every scene. A man went to war and got captured by his enemy, which turned out to be his brother, they went to visit their old mother and then they fell in love with her servants. But the first man was already married and had a kid, which died. So the servant felt guilty and brought him back to his wife, who was still walking around with the death baby. They went to visit a witch and begged her to bring their child back to live. And so she did. Happiness all around.
Apparently, the Chinese version of this Opera is totally different. I like my version better though.

Oh, and today I was compared to the dramatic Chipmunk. I have no idea why?